Task 7 - "The Mirror of Fine Art" by Kiril

The Mirror of fine Art

“What a live I’ve had! What a thriller! I am pretty sure that even da Vinci’s “Lady with an ermine” would want to switch places with me. You can’t count that for much, after all, she is actually a lady hugging a rat, but it is something, it should be something. Oh, who am I trying to fool? I’ve spent an eternity in this dark ugly backstreet gallery. And that is not the worst. Every time someone does enter I feel like a kitty waiting for adoption. I just hope that some idiot with a ten-digit bank account would finally buy me and put me in a spacious well-lit room across a window with a splendid vista of a beautiful city. A dust protector and a temperature and humidity controller would be nice, too.”, said the painting to itself. It actually said a lot more, it was a very clever and talkative painting, in fact, it was so clever that it possessed the processing power of a supercomputer and could probably prove Fermat’s last theorem in a nanosecond, and so talkative that it could easily deliver a speech that would make Fidel Castro look like a shy schoolboy. As a matter of fact if the painting had access to one of those fancy speech synthesizer with a strong Yankee accent, and hence the ability to communicate it would probably be able to steer human civilization in a much better direction than its political leaders. Sadly, all this happening would be highly unlikely. I leave it to you to decide if it was a miracle of God or some sick trick of fate, but actually the very next thing that happened was even less likely. A man entered the gallery, passed quickly the other paintings in the exhibition and suddenly came to a sharp halt in front of our super clever and hyper talkative painting.

“Interested in that one, ah, aren’t you. I can see already that you are a man of fine taste! “ the gallery owner had popped out of nowhere.

“Well,..”

“A pretty talented lad, that author. And he has one of those strange artistic names on which alone you could count to make you a great artist. Dorian Grey. Come on, let us say it together just so that you can feel the power of the name. Dorian Grey!”

“Dori…”

“You have seen his works exhibited in the Louvre , I suppose . Quite extraordinary sketches, I should say. Well, I wouldn’t like to steal more of your precious time sir. Let’s cut the long story short! Will it be cash or credit card?”

“I don’t want it” said the man.

“Sure, do you want me to wrap it up for you?”

“I don’t want it” said the man again.

“What do you mean you don’t want it? I have children to feed, ok, ok, this painting is worth three million, but I will make you a discount, just for you it will be two million. How about that? ... Oh, you want to ruin me! Ok, then you can have half of it for a million, and this is my final offer. You cannot say no to that, can you! …Ok, please don’t leave! What is your favorite color; I will have Dorian redo it for you adding more of it!”

“ I came in to ask where the closest grocery store is.”

“Oh, please be gone!”

The man left and the owner said to himself “I just hate these cheap b*****ds, who come in here and don’t have a clue to what the price of fine art is!”

“Ha, and if you have a clue to what the price of being fine art is ,then I am, I am a postcard,” the painting laughed bitterly. It had endured the whole conversation and stood still hanging on the wall. It was in a bad mood. You see, if one doesn’t take into consideration its monstrous intellect it was not quite unlike a human being. It had never seen what was drawn on it, and it had to heavily rely on the perception of others to guess if it was a beautiful painting or not. Neither the author, nor the owner of the gallery, nor the painting itself were aware but, every time when someone was unimpressed by the painting’s look, a fresh new shade of dark grey appeared among its beautiful colours.